The Other Kahn | Hidden City Philadelphia

In an ever-upward trajectory, Kahn left his post as chief designer of Mason & Rice to strike out on his own, founding first Kahn & Mason until 1902, and later Kahn & Wilby until 1918. Many treatments of Albert Kahn inevitably deflect toward his kinship with Ford and his impressive portfolio of industrial architecture. Structures like the Packard Motor Car Company Building No. 10 (1905), Philadelphia’s Ford factory on Broad Street, Ford’s half-mile-long River Rouge complex, the Detroit Arsenal Tank Plant and Willow Run Bomber Plant stand as emblems of the modern aesthetic: sparse in ornament, direct in their materials and flexible and open in their plans. Later designs like the the Tank and Bomber plants further stoked Europe’s infatuation with slim, clean lines of glass and steel and provided a template–for good or ill–of a bold new post-World War II Modernist aesthetic.